1,00, 000 Crore telecom spectrum scam by UPA

A scam, a yawning deficit



Facts that have recently come to light indicate that the telecom spectrum scam is the biggest financial scandal in the history of Independent India, involving an amount not less than Rs 50,000 crore and possibly as high as Rs 1,00,000 crore — as much as one-fortieth of the country’s national income. This sum is certainly more than the total amount spent by the Central government in a year on health-care and roughly three-fourths of the fiscal deficit indicated in the Union budget for the current financial year.
The scam acquired a new dimension when promoters of three Indian companies holding telecom licences decided to offload a hefty part of their equity stakes in these firms. Swan Telecom sold 45 per cent of its shares to Etisalat (of the United Arab Emirates) for Rs 4,100 crore; Unitech Wireless offloaded 60 per cent of its stake to Telenor (of Norway) for Rs 6,200 crore; and Tata Teleservices sold 26 per cent of its shares to NTT DoCoMo of Japan for Rs 13,230 crore.